Accountant booted from doing publicly traded work

CLEARWATER — Federal regulators suspended a pair of area audit firms and five accountants for bad audits.

The Clearwater-based firms, Messineo & Co. and DKM Certified Public Accountants, which merged in 2012, “performed deficient audits of public companies, jeopardized the independence of other audits, and falsified and backdated audit documents,” according to a statement from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

These are the penalties each firm and accountant faces, according to the SEC:

• Peter Messineo and his firm Messineo & Co. are permanently barred from practicing as accountants on behalf of any publicly traded company or other entity regulated by the SEC. Messineo and his firm, which had more than 70 corporate clients, skipped mandatory quality reviews for their own audits and performed deficient quality reviews for audits by another audit firm, the agency alleges;
• Charles Klein and his firm DKM Certified Public Accountants are suspended from appearing or practicing before the SEC as accountants for at least two years;
• Robin Bigalke is suspended at least three years for falsifying and backdating audit documents in her role as Messineo & Co.'s senior accountant;
• Joseph Mohr is suspended at least four years for falsely identifying himself as a CPA;
• Richard Confessore is suspended at least two years for improperly serving conflicting roles as a member of the DKM audit team and an employee of Messineo & Co.

The group of audited accountants will pay penalties of more than $100,000, the statement says.